Noteboom The Law Firm

Completed Disability Claim Form May Mean More Money for Applicants

March 9, 2011 - Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) is the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee's highest ranking republican. He is throwing his support behind recently introduced legislation that, if passed, would provide a full year of additional compensation for those veterans submitting disability benefits claim applications that are filled out in their entirety.

In order to be considered completely filled out, applications must include every last bit of information and evidence the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) will need to process their claim for quick approval. Claims meeting this criterion will be backdated one year from the filing date, making their effective first date of payments 12 months prior. As with all compensation payments, the amount of that extra years worth of payments will depend on both the veterans' disability as well as how many dependants he or she supports.

The legislation is the latest attempt to battle the VA's huge backlog of disability claims. There are over 360,000 claims in the VA's possession that have been pending approval for over 125 days. According to Burr, a large majority of the backlog is due to the VA spending time gathering their own evidence to determine the claim's validity. Fully completed claims would essentially skip that stage of processing and thereby have the claims processed faster.

Multiple attempts have been made at reducing the claims backlog, but no substantial progress has been made. Without some kind of widespread intervention in the claims process, the backlog will continue to grow. Hopefully if veterans can do a little more work right in the beginning of the process it will mean less processing time once the claim has entered the system.